ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two conceptual frameworks for understanding the relation between technical communication and humanism: traditional dualism and contemporary holism. The increasing development of this humanistic aspect yields a fuller, more balanced understanding of technical communication which includes the manifold social contingencies and ramifications of technical communication. The humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the initiators of the Renaissance. They were students and teachers of the rhetoric, history, moral philosophy and other areas of ancient Greek and Roman thought, keenly interested in the resurrection and expansion of these classical ideas. Well before the Italian humanists of course, classical Greek thinkers originated the liberal arts and humanism in another strict sense. The chapter describes the traditional dualistic framework, outlines its history, and characterizes the view of language which it entails. The view of language associated with the humanistic framework emphasizes the holistic interrelatedness of fact and opinion, the subjectivity of knowledge, and the rhetorical negotiation of knowledge.
